In the distant future, the X universe faces a period of profound and irrevocable change. While the universe stumbles towards an uncertain future, countless adventures await as new enemies rise in search of power.

April 2

• Improved extension handling so that loading order of mods now follows defined dependencies.
• Fixed several of the most common remaining causes of crashes.
• Fixed capital shield being unable to boost if they have no shields (fix in 3.51 did not work in all cases).
• Fixed broken buttons on player ship entry in encyclopedia.
• Fixed rounding error relating to upgrade counts.
• Fixed missing text truncation for objectives in Mission Manager.

March 27

• Fixed default NPCs being able to board the playership and getting stuck.
• Fixed being able to get more than five skill stars through employee training before skills are revealed.
• Fixed ship animation issues when leaving the area and returning later.
• Fixed some Russian localisation issues.
• Fixed a problem loading plot savegames made in versions created prior to 3.51 while player ship docked.

Note: Although the last fix listed above does restore Yisha if she was accidentally removed in 3.51, we recommend that you do not use savegames made in 3.51 which suffered this problem as you may encounter problems such as stuck plot missions. Savegames made in 3.50 which would have suffered this problem had they been loaded in 3.51 should be be fine in 3.52.

Mac OS X/Linux/SteamOS Public Alpha

X Rebirth 3.53 is now available for both Mac and Linux as an Alpha test version. To enable it on OS X, select the beta branch "macosx". To enable it on Linux/SteamOS, select the beta branch "linux". For details, known issues and technical support see the support threads (Mac, Linux) in the Egosoft forum.

About This Game

In the distant future, the X universe faces a period of profound and irrevocable change. While the universe stumbles towards an uncertain future, countless adventures await as new enemies rise in search of power. Enter a young adventurer and his unlikely female ally traveling in an old, battered ship with a glorious past - two people alone against the galaxy, playing a key part in the events to come. The fate of the universe rests in the hands of the player...

X Rebirth represents a spectacular new beginning for the X series, offering loyal fans and newcomers alike a vast, vivid and extremely detailed universe to explore throughout the game. Varied gameplay elements such as action-packed space combat, detailed trading mechanics and high-speed space exploration with fast travel allow players to experience a truly unique space saga that will keep them hooked for dozens of hours. X Rebirth features a whole new user experience - it is easier than ever to start with, and remains as deep as fans expect it.

FEATURES

++ Every ship you see has a task. Stop a freighter from reaching its destination and its cargo will be stopped too, causing prices to rise. ++

FIGHT! From small scale skirmishes to epic ﬂeet encounters, battles in the X Universe know no limits. Choose to ﬁght for the military, work for the police or be a lawless pirate, or if you prefer just ﬁght when you need to defend yourself - it's up to you.

++ Take the action right into massive structures. Target turrets and shield generators to weaken your enemy, damage engines and jump drives to prevent their ships from escaping, or stop their factories producing to cripple their economy. ++

BUILD! Create your own empire! From trading stations to large factories, farms to hightech military complexes, everything can belong to you. Build for trade and proﬁt or to strengthen your military presence and dominate your enemies.

++ Extend and upgrade your stations to make them operate more efﬁciently, with every element visible in glorious animated detail. Harvest your own resources to keep your empire running smoothly. ++

THINK! A rich, detailed history and a deep complex plot await you, but you are free to decide when and where to take part. Explore the universe at your own pace - choose your own path and create your own destiny.

++ Get up-close and personal with aliens and humans alike. Land on stations, meet people, then accept missions from them or hire them as crew members for your ships. ++

TRADE, FIGHT, BUILD, THINK... in the X Universe - the biggest sandbox this side of the galaxy.

For the plot, just watch on Youtube.This game cost Egosoft a Roguey (*formerly* a big fan/promoter/guy who runs a nice X-game site) and was a waste of a Cycrow (modder who brought life to a lot of the X-games). It's bad.

Looooong version (sorry for grammar or speeling errors, it took awhile to write up):

The game has so much win buried under an avalanche of fail. After more than a year patching, patching, upgrading, and patching, there are still enough bugs you'd think it was released yesterday. I'm not going to go in a standard format: all pros, then all cons, but break things down piece by piece to show the good and how it's buried under fail, at the end will be a more personal take.

Flight:

1) You get a highway system that takes you to most places quickly. (With a roller-coaster atmosphere).2) You also get an overbooster that lets you move about 10x normal speed at the cost of shields.3) You can dock at your own capital ships and order them to use jump drives to ferry you around for longer trips.

The Avalanche: With this system, and the layout of the areas in the game, a 1-way trip can take 10-20 minutes (not sure exactly how long) from one end of the game to the other. You also NEVER GET A PERSONAL JUMP DRIVE. Keep this in mind for trading later.

Flight 2:

The autopilot and AI piloting seem a lot smarter - navigating the bigger and more complex stations is not lethal like it was in previous X-games. You only ever take shield damage, awesome!

The bad (not an avalanche): the game makes you scan stations in order to see their production cycles. If you're impatient, you'll bump stations a lot. (Pro: they won't go hostile for bumping them!) Sometimes when you bump a station, you'll end up inside the station geometry with no way out but to keep bumping until you bump yourself outside the geometry...

Fight:

The fighters you face (in groups up to a dozen or more) have weapons that beat anything you can get in 2 of 3 categories: range, accuracy, dps. There's one common fighter that has four guns, which can beat you in all three categories (since there are only two useful/useable weapons in the game). Facing them in groups is only possible because you have an overboost and can run away again and again and again...

Stations and Trade:

1) You use construction vessels to build your own stations.2) Stations are large complexes that generally produce a class of goods (turrets, foodstuffs) instead of one item as in previous games, which you used to have to chain into complexes in order to get large-scale, efficient production (my max was 171 stations in previous games IIRC).3) Stations have guns and can defend themselves!4) Trade ships can cue up orders (if you have trade software installed)!5) Stations can only be built in certain areas (boon or bust on perspective), which prevents stations colliding with each other or being built halfway into an asteroid.6) Stations with intended construction will have a red box in space until all ships leave the construction area (no more stations being accidentally built ON the player ship).

The avalanche:This game was obviously not made for trade or station building. Completed stations still retain their vulnerable (and unsightly) construction vesssels nearby. Ownership is slightly bugged with staff being shown as "Trade Manager ???" even after you've assigned somebody. Ships take a looong time (5+ minutes sometimes) to dock, trade, and undock. And they occasionally bug out and sit there, which requires a workaround to get them trading again.

Stations are nigh invincible, quickly obliterating anything short of a capital fleet you send at them (though the player can duck and weave to avoid fire, because many players are smarter than the AI). Destroyed NPC stations stay with 0 hull and will eventually be rebuilt, so a lot of options like meaningful faction war or annihilating the universe are impossible.

NPC trade ships are not built at shipyards. The NPC ships built at shipyards have the command 'explore' and will fly around a little bit before despawning. Functioning NPC ships just spawn, possibly with a full load of goods (to supplement broken the economy). So killing NPC trade ships won't affect the game economy much.

Production values of stations were poorly determined. There's a Med Despensary that will illustrate: it has a primary, secondary, and tertiary product (space weed, narcotics, and medicine). It requires space weed to produce narcotics, and both of those two to produce medicine. It doesn't produce as much space weed as it requires to make narcotics and medicines; this requires either another station or purchase of supplies from NPCs. There are other (cell fab) stations whose output is used by other stations (arms tech fab). The cell fab production is insufficient to fully supply one other station (and the stations should make much more than needed by ONE other station - they're massive stations that can take over a day IRL to complete - more if resources are scarce).

Trade ships are also frequently stupid - if a station has 50,000 of something and another station needs 25,000, a player-owned trade ship will transport 100 of it, roughly 1% of its cargo capacity, leaving 90% free (9% used by jump drive fuel).

The kicker: Where in previous X-games, station products could be used by the player (and the primary motivation of station building was often to produce certain things - missiles, turrets - on a scale larger than the rest of the universe combined), in Rebirth, station products (with 2 or so exceptions) serve to feed shipyards. The player can no longer own a shipyard. The NPC shipyards might decide to make a ship - for which it doesn't have the appropriate resources - when you're trying to buy one. So you have to get supplies to the shipyard, wait up to 20 minutes for the ship (which will only despawn anyway) to complete, then a few more minutes for it to undock, before you can place your buy order and gather even more resources for YOUR ship.

The above is actually the reason I stopped playing - I have 18 stations complete waiting for X:Rebirth 5.0 just in case it's worth playing. At the moment the only 'meaningful' interaction with the game world is to make stations that supply NPC stations that make ships that despawn shortly after creation.

But continuing: you can only directly order ships to trade if they're in your squad. You get a view of 'buy orders' and 'sell orders' that are stored in your computer. You order your ship to fulfill those orders. You can't say 'buy/sell X amount of Y product, optionally from A, B, or C station'.

You can only see those buy orders if you're looking at the intended station (within 1 km or so of it), which require you to travel through the universe to update trade offers, which is why a jump drive would have been useful. Note: you *can* get remote updates if you do a speech game with people on the station, but eventually you will have to go back out there and update the trade offers. (You speech them, they agree to update trade offers for 5-6 hrs or so, then the 5-6 hour period ends, and you need to go back to the station for trade offers to update for the next 5-6 hrs. You don't need to do the speech game any more than once per station.)

---More was here, but cut due to size limitation---

Summary:So there you go, a STILL bugged game with a paper thin, very underwhelming story which was obviously not made to enable trade, capital ship use, or station construction - most of the things that made X games popular, and which only does some of the combat right. At this point we all know this was supposed to be an X-Box 360 game, and NOT an X-series game. Ego says it was Deep Silver that pushed them to quickly release an X-game, but whomever came up with and pushed the idea for rushing an X-game should be fired and worse for gross incompetence.

It was an awfully bad game at launch, which i swore never to play again.

But now more than a year later, i have to admit the devs turned things around and made it an amazing game.This game definitely deserves a second chance

- no more technical problems, high fps on modern pc's- beautifully rendered space stations, vibrant environments- UI has been improved a lot, much faster and more detailed,also less clutter in the cockpit.- character models are much better now- missions are more varied - the economy is indeed fully simulated now

I just wish the devs had postponed it's initial launch, because X Rebirth no longer deserves such harsh reviews and low scores

Despite having been released over a year ago and receiving many patches, the game still severely underperforms on high-end hardware and does not have compelling gameplay. Expect to spend 80% of your play time flying back and forth through transparent space tubes, 10% flying around space stations within 10 meters of the hull to scan information points and giving trade orders to your ships, and the last 10% pew-pewing spaceships with one weapon at a time.

Here are some of the game's shortcomings:

Boring gameplay consisting mostly of flying through space tubes, as if you're playing some sort of public transit passenger simulator rather than a space game.

You can only pilot one ship unlike previous games, where you had hundreds of choices in many ship categories, from scouts to carriers to freighters.

All objects in space are inexplicably surrounded by protective bubbles that absorb all damage from collisions, making the few precious moments spent outside space tubes even less exciting.

A lot of tasks needlessly require the player's presence, such as chauffeuring ship officers from stations to the ships where they are to work.

When talking to NPCs, you must wait for them to finish talking before your commands take effect, given the fact that a particular zone may have dozens of NPCs of the same type offering their services, this makes finding specific goods very annoying.

You are forced to use a cockpit, wasting 30% of your screen on what is essentially a static model with some flashing lights here and there. A discreet HUD overlaid on an unobstructed view of space would be vastly superior for many players.

The draw distance is depressing, with objects conspicuously popping in as you travel inside space tubes.

The 4 different sectors are basically palette swaps of each other with a few cosmetic differences (a cracked planet here, some space debris there, etc).

The script and voiceovers quite obviously weren't done by native speakers, resulting in strange and immersion-breaking dialogue and pronunciation.

Character models and station interiors are very low-quality.

The Teladi look like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. This would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Your co-pilot's jumpsuit has an embarrassing boob window that betrays a lack of respect for the playerbase.

The game does feature a few improvements, however they hardly justify all its shortcomings:

okey so i've been playing X-rebirth (on steam) for 150 hours now so thought why not its probably time to write a review for the game so others can see what its like. the first thing to get out of the way is NO this is not X-rebirth 1.0 that sucked and was almost umplayable and missing a lot, i'm playing on X-rebirth 3.51 atm and they have truely turned the game around and its pretty much amazing now.

What i love about the gameThe thing about x-rebirth that i love is how massive the world is and the fact it is all rendered in real time with all of your owned ships, you can be just wandering around a station collecting stashes while one of your stations is receiving wares on the other side of the galaxy, or one of your patrolling ships encounters a xenon that wondered into the area. the world never stops and waits for you to finish a mission or to catch up to someone your following to continue like it does on so many other games and thats one of the things i love about it. The other major thing i love is that you control all of whats happening from your one ship, the Albion skunk you can start as just a little ship doing all the work yourself to managing a giant fleet, or a trading empire or whatever you want and its so imersive in that sense because you don't just instantly get these things you have to find ways to get the money to buy a construction vessel to start building a station, be it slowly with missions moving cargo or transporting people, or by accepting missions from the pirate factions and getting several million by causing mass chaos (at the downside of turning factions against you) you can do whatever you want.

What i hate about the gameHonestly the only thing that bugs me about the game is how they haven't been able to go as far as they could of with the whole idea of the economy, yeah each faction has its own funds and stations and resources and stuff but theres still instances where it feels like ships spawn in out of nowhere instead of being built, like with some of the pirate factions in the game, they have their own stations yes but they are in now way capable of building ships or making money to supply the pirates? and the pirates don't actually raid trade shipments, they attack it then if they win they just fly off and look for another one. i can't help but feel that they could have done more with that so that pirates actually had to attack people to survive and if you fought them off enough or launched attacks on their outposts it would slow them down or eventually destroy that faction. since you can make giant empires and have fleets of 50 ships easily but you cant seem to stop a group of pirates.

Communitythe only problem with the game changing so much is that when you search google for guides and stuff they are all for older versions of x-rebirth, or the wiki's are no longer up-to-date because the people who were working on them have long since given up on the game as have many fans because of how long it has taken them to get a nicely working version of it. it's also majorly effected the game's rating and put off a lot of new gamers coming to play it, but trust me this is not the same game it is a epic trading/empire/war simulation.

Modswith the prospect of mods now aswell you can completely destroy people's stations and help some factions build more of their own, the mods have added a tonn of content to the game along with what there already is in it so i do recomend checking them out.

Overall, if you like actually thinking about a game then get this xD its whatever you wanna do kinda game and worth the cash, if you wanna get nitty gritty into working out different productions and sabotaging other companies so your's will be able to sell stuff at higher price you can be that kinda player, but if you just like flying around shooting stuff there is that too, whatever kinda playstyle you have you can make your way in x-rebirth

As a player who can barely get into the other X games, I was kinda worried about getting this game on release day. 1 year and a half later, this game goes on sale for 15$ and they even offered a free weekend period for the skeptics. I decided to jump in, and I was extremely pleased with what I found:

-The most immersive space game I have played, second only to Freelancer ( I miss you Freelancer :'I )-Actual effort in the soundtrack!!!! (God, I can listen to this all day)- U.I. that is more friendly than past X games. - Hiring and assigning employees is easier than ever.- The economic system has depth thanks to the different aspects of base building- The ships and stations are all eye candy, adding to the rewards of exploration.- Combat, while not as creative as Starpoint Gemini, is still satisfying and epic!

Sidenote: The fact that you can control only one ship might ♥♥♥♥ off a few people, but I find that it contributes to the personal side of the experience.

Other than framerate issues, I haven't experienced many negatives in this game (yet). I will update this review accordingly.

EDIT:-Ram leak, which forces me to restart the game every 2-3 hours (not too bad, but I have 8 gb, I can't imagine those with 4)-Having fleets is quite awesome, but capital ships seem to collide with each other WAY too often. I personally fixed this by making 2 capital ships follow another, and that other follows me.-Be careful what mods you put, it might prevent the trigger of important story events.